Tip 7: Make writing less of a priority in your life

Why sidling up to the writing makes you more likely to do it.

Writers’ brains are no different than anyone else’s brains but the act of writing – or wanting to write – can throw into stark relief how messy and complicated our grey matter is.

It goes something like this.

You’ve got an idea, you have a rock solid plan, you’ve made the time and brewed a nice cup of something caffeinated to drink. Do you start?

Nope.

In fact, you do anything but.

An hour of distracted flitting goes by and all of a sudden your daily demands come pressing in. Another writing session lost – how darn frustrating.  

The natural reaction here is to tell yourself to make writing more of a priority. But ‘making it a priority’ will conversely, make you less likely to do it. Why? Because it makes ‘doing the writing’ more onerous.

Dial the pressure down – not up

When I explained this idea to a struggling coaching client a few months back, she started to ‘sidle up’ to the writing. We love this idea! Sidling up is a simple technique to ease you into the writing, here’s a couple of ideas you can try:

• Don’t start by ‘doing the writing’ but try something gentler like reading your last paragraph, doing a spot of editing, note taking or freewriting – the choice is yours. Then, slowly, when you are nicely warmed up, introduce a little writing. Then some more.

• While ‘going to your writing desk’ can signal your writing seriousness (isn’t that what PROPER writers do?) your writing desk can be an intimidating and distracting place. Instead, change your environment. Start by reading over a few notes while sitting on the sofa. Don’t open your laptop, but instead, write long hand. Create a mind map. Note things on post its. Make it colourful - fun.

When we sidle up to the writing we fool our contrarian brains into thinking the writing isn’t important to us when in fact it is - which in turn makes us more likely to do it. We’re funny creatures huh?

How could you sidle up to your writing? We’d love to know. Leave a comment below - you know the drill.

Keep writing :)

Chris and Bec

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